CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN COLLABORATIVE NETWORK

ENTERPRISES

Sara Alves da Silva, Patrícia Macedo

School of Technology of Setúbal,Campus do IPS, Setúbal, Portugal

Pedro Antunes

Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisboa, Portugal

Keywords: ADR, Meditation, Collaborative Networks, StoryTelling.

Abstract: Enterprises are nowadays faced with increasing levels of flexibility and customer-orientation. As enterprises

react to this challenge, they intensify their engagement in collaborative networks. Recent studies have

shown that these networks must share goals, have some level of mutual trust, and agree with some practices

and values. Value systems are considered as the ordering and prioritization of the ethical and ideological

values held by collaborative networks. Conciliating different values and priorities may depend on a

mediation process. From an information systems point of view, the mediation process is highly complex

because of the informal and tacit nature of values systems. In this paper we propose using storytelling, an

old technique used to reconstruct past events, to support conflict resolution. The paper presents an analysis

of conflict resolution in collaborative network enterprises supported by the storytelling technique.

1 INTRODUCTION

The current economic situation is characterized by

the requirement for a flexible and customer oriented

production of goods (Gunasekaran, 2004)

(Wiendalh, 2002). In order to bear those challenges,

many enterprises intensify their engagement in

collaborative network enterprises. Recent studies

have shown that some requirements are necessary to

create such collaborative network enterprises: share

goals between members, have some level of mutual

trust and common infrastructures, and agree totally

or partially with some practices and values

(Camarinha-Matos and H. 2003) (Afsarmanesh,

2005).

Social sciences consider Value Systems as the

ordering and prioritization of the ethical and

ideological values held by an individual or society.

Values can be classified as communal or individual.

Communal Value Systems are applied to a

community or society and may be supported by a

legal set of laws and norms.

There are several studies on Value System in

diverse scientific areas, such as Education (Cooley

1977), Organizational Management (Krishnan,

2005) and Information Systems Design

(Shneiderman, 1998). Research in collaborative

network organizations has addressed Value Systems

in diverse ways (Katzy, 1998) (Liu, 2005) (Tan et al.

2004) (M.Jamieson et al. 1986) (Camarinha-Matos

and Abreu 2005) (Afsarmanesh, 2005) (Rezgui et al.

2004). However, none of these studies addressed

Value System analysis in the conflict resolution

context.

Storytelling is a very old technique, possibly

linked to the origins of language, to share values

within communities. Simplicity, flexibility,

informality are characteristics necessary to

encapsulate knowledge, and telling a story is a

natural form to convey it. That is why storytelling in

organizations has been identified as a fundamental

means to share norms and values, among other

things (Lelic, 2001). Stories powerfully convey

norms and values across generations in the

organizations. Such norms and values derive from

the organization’s past but also can shape its future.

Stories highlight future opportunities with important

decision-making information about the past

successes and failures. Organizational members tend

329

Alves da Silva S., Macedo P. and Antunes P. (2007).

CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN COLLABORATIVE NETWORK ENTERPRISES.

In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - ISAS, pages 329-333

DOI: 10.5220/0002371503290333

 SciTePress

to see stories as a means to understand and commit

to the organizational goals, norms and values

(Brown, 1982). More recently, the storytelling

technique has also been used to reconstructed past

knowledge about important events (Perret et al.

2004).

The main goal of this paper is to analyze how

conflict resolution in collaborative network

enterprises may be supported by the storytelling

technique. The next section will introduce the

concept of Value System in the collaborative context

and summarize different contributions from studies

on Values Systems. In the third section, the

mediation/conflict resolution process is explained.

The Storytelling technique is described in section

four. The section five proposes a logical model for

implementing the proposed approach in a network

enterprise. Conclusions and future work are

presented in the last section.

2 VALUE SYSTEMS

2.1 Overview

In psychology and sociology, values have typically

been conceptualized as shared beliefs about desired

behaviors and end-states (Rokeach, 1973). These

shared beliefs address goal pursuit processes and

outcomes. Merton (1957) advocates that the cultural

objectives of an organizational unit are the “Things

worth striving for” - what has outcome value in the

culture. Value has also been defined as “relative

worth, utility, or importance: degree of excellence.”

(Webster, 1989) This definition highlights the fact

that object’s value depends on the “standard” that is

used in evaluation. Depending on the standard, the

same object may be valuated differently. Inside an

organization, cultural and social values are used as

referential for evaluations. The set of values

accepted by an individual or society define their

value systems.

This concept has been studied and applied by

diverse researchers. The philosopher Robert

Hartman developed Formal Axiology, which is a

branch of Axiology (a general theory about human

values, their origins, interrelationships and

dynamics) attempting to apply mathematical

formalisms to specify values and value systems.

Hartman (1973) defined value in terms of a logic-

based axiom. The axiom is that value can be

objectively determined according to a one-to-one

correspondence between the properties of a given

object and the specifications contained in its

conceptualization. An object has value to the extent

it fulfils its conceptualization (Mefford and Meffortd

1997). Hartman also introduced the concept of

dimension of value and developed the basic axioms

through this concept. He defines three dimensions:

systematic value, extrinsic value and intrinsic value.

Hartman defends that the foundational concepts of

Axiology provide a framework for understanding an

object’s value and its valuations, based on the three

dimensions mentioned above.

Goguen and Linde (1994; 1997; 2004) developed

since 1978 several studies about values and value

systems in organizations. They proposed a method,

using discourse analysis, to elicit the organizations’

value systems from a collection of stories told by the

members of the organization on informal occasions.

The evaluative material collected from these stories

is classified and represented using a formal structure

designated value system tree (Goguen, 1994). A

value system tree serves as a formal summary of the

interpretations made the analysts from the collected

data.

Other contributions to the study of values

systems came from the Distributed Artificial

Intelligence discipline. This discipline has developed

several theories about value systems using agents.

For instance, (Filipe, 2003) proposed an approach

based on organizational agents, where each agent is

responsible for representing its own values and value

system based on preferences with respect to norms.

2.2 Value Systems in the Collaborative

Network Enterprise Context

A collaborative network enterprise is defined as a

temporary alliance of enterprises which come

together, sharing skills, core competencies and

resources in order to better respond to business

opportunities (Camarinha-Matos and H. 2003).

In the network, each organization has its own

organizational culture and beliefs, which are mapped

in its value system.

As mentioned before, values have typically been

conceptualized as shared beliefs about processes and

outcomes. So, the choices and processes in an

organization are directly influenced by its value

system. Working in a collaborative network

environment involves sharing decision-making. As

decision-making depends on the referential used to

evaluate alternative procedures, the decision-making

process is strongly influenced by the value system of

each network member.

The value system and the value system model are

distinct objects. The conceptual model of a value

system is a theoretical construct that represents the

perceived reality, with a set of variables and a set of

logical and quantitative relationships between them.

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The construction of the value system model for

each organization supports several activities during

the collaborative network enterprise life-cycle, such

as: partner selection, at the creation phase; adoption

of norms, during the configuration phase; conflict

resolution and relationship management, during the

operation phase; and norms adjustment and new

member selection, during the reconfiguration phase.

3 MEDIATION AND CONFLICT

RESOLUTION

Conflict is usually defined as the “state of

opposition, disagreement or incompatibility between

two or more people or groups of people”. In a

positive approach, conflicts are regarded a way of

learning and developing social and communication

abilities. This approach is supported by the belief

that different points of view challenge the human

comprehension and perception of new ideas.

Analyzing collaborative network enterprises,

according to the values systems context, conflicts

appear as the clash of different value elements:

objects, activities and choices. The level of conflict

depends on the order and prioritization given by an

organization to those value elements. In (Weber,

1967), the author defends that the value given to an

object, activity and choice depends on the cultural

and socialization aspects of the society. Culture

involves a community of individuals who

collaborate with the purpose to construct a shared

reality of the world around them. This constructed

shared reality is unique to humans. What is special

about cultural values is not their abstract nature,

such as freedom or equality as values, but the fact

that people recognize those values as being shared

with others. In the organizational context, values

support the organizational culture and are the

starting point of a conflict.

As said above, when two distinct organizations

prioritize values in a different way, it is natural that

conflicts occur. Resolving a conflict in a

collaborative network enterprise, requires a conflict

resolution process, which must be carefully chosen

to support and maintain the organizations’

relationship (CCE, 2002). It is very important that

the conflict resolution process satisfies the

organizations’ interests, naturally associated to their

value systems.

Value system conflicts are a specific kind of

conflict that may challenge the organizational

culture, the collaborative network enterprise and the

future relationships within the network. The conflict

resolution process must provide a way of sharing

and understanding the differences, so that the final

result meets both parties’ interests to an acceptable

degree (Goodim, 1999). Mediation is a well known

conflict resolution process in the legal field, used as

an alternative to the traditional litigation process,

and fits the requirements mentioned before

(Advogados, 2004). This process has an informal

nature in which a trained mediator assists the parties

reaching a negotiated resolution. The mediator does

not decide who is right or wrong and has no

authority to impose a settlement. Instead, the

mediator helps the parties jointly exploring and

reconciling their differences (Relvas et al. 2004).

Managing the knowledge about each enterprise

value system and the information flows is the key

for success in this process.

4 STORYTELLING

Stories are a universal means of communication,

allowing the representation and organization of

complex knowledge (Laurel, 1993). A human being

uses stories because in a deep mind level s/he knows

that stories are an excellent, fast and simple

mechanism form knowledge dissemination.

Storytelling is a method based on the act of telling a

story (Lelic, 2001), aiming at capturing and

disseminating knowledge.

Figure 1: The StoryTelling Method.

Organizations are nowadays aware of the

importance of organizational knowledge, and realize

that such knowledge is mostly informal and can not

be put into categorical or analytical forms, specialy

when groups of people and cedision-making

processes are involved. In order to solve this

problem, organizations develop multiple

mechanisms for managing tacit and informal

knowledge. Stories provide one possible solution to

this problem (Perret et al. 2004).

In storytelling, a story is assembled by events,

and events are elicited from different people in

Element 1

Element 2

Element 3

Event 1.1

Event 2.1

Event 1.2

Event 3.2

Event 3.1

Event 1.1

Event 2.1

Event 1.2

Event 3.2

Event 3.1

Start

End

StoryTelling

Fase 1

Event 3.1

Event 1.1

Event 1.2

Event 3.2

Event 1.2

Start

End

Neutra l Element

StoryTelling

Final Result

StoryTelling

Fase n

StoryTelling session

CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN COLLABORATIVE NETWORK ENTERPRISES

331

storytelling sessions. These sessions consist of

communication and argumentation processes, in

which every person contributes, in an informal way,

with his or her own view. A preliminary story may

constructed after capturing all the events and giving

them an order, following the perceived relations

between the available events (phase 1). With the

contribution of a neutral element, events may then

be analyzed in detail and re-arranged, to produce a

more elaborate story, where gaps may have been

removed and the causal relationships are more

thouroughly specified (phase 2). Figure 1 illustrates

the storytelling process conducted by a group of

people.

As the result of several research studies,

storytelling in organizations is considered a mean to

share norms and values, develop trust and

commitment, and share tacit knowledge. To develop

trust and commitment, stories transmit the diversity

of competencies and commitments of oneself and

others. Revealing personal stories may expose one’s

competence and commitment to values, as well as

signal trust and willingness to collaborate.

Relativelly to sharing tacit knowledge, stories are

also an efficient mean to exchange entrenched

knowledge and transform tacit knowledge into

explicit knowledge (Denning, 2002).

Values and norms are defined and maintained as

the result of individual’s commitment to stories, and

thus the organization depends on them to preserve

the values system.

5 SOLVING CONFLICTS

THROUGH STORYTELLING

As mentioned in session 2, different values systems

might produce conflicts in the inter-organizational

context. The outcomes of the mediation process

provide the required understanding of the

differences and satisfy the organizational interests in

solving the conflict. And the storytelling technique

may support this mediation process. Storytelling

provides a simple and informal mechanism to

organize and inter-connect the information generated

in a mediation process. During the mediation

process, several arguments are exposed, and these

arguments need clarified and structured. This

process will allow a better comprehension for those

involved.

We propose a conflict resolution model, based on

storytelling, structuring the different elements of the

enterprises’ value systems, as shown in figure 2. The

major model components are Values system model

that supplies information about each organization’s

values system and Storytelling component that

captures structures and displays events and their

causal relationships.

Figure 2: Conflict resolution model.

The storytelling component integrates the stories

produced by the organizational elements involved in

the conflict with the information stored in the value

system model component. It is not enough to build a

story based on the arguments produced during the

mediation session. Opposite elements will better

comprehend the other side if the arguments

produced be associated, integrated with the

organizational values.

In the process of capturing events, the

storytelling component in addition stores the

experience of the participants with the conflict

resolution process.

Studies in Social Psychology sustain that values

come from experiences (Higgins, 1996), and these

experiences, as outcomes of the conflict resolution

process, should also be added to the values system

model component. This knowledge may be used to

solve future conflicts, and contributes to the network

sustainability.

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6 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

Norms and values are very important assets in

organizations. Collaborative network sustainability

depends on conflict resolution processes and the

means used to achieve it. We present a possible

approach to conflict resolution and network

sustainability based on the values system theory and

the storytelling technique. The proposed solution

utilizes the storytelling technique, to identify and

organize events which, when combined with models

of the different values system of the participants

involved in the process, facilitate conflict resolution.

The implementation of the value system model and

storytelling components is now in progress.

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